LEAVING the EU was never going to be quick or easy. Brussels has spent the past 44 years tying Britain up in bureaucratic knots so a transition period was always somewhat of an inevitability.

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Sep 24, 2017

Prime Minister Theresa May’s offer to pay into EU coffers for an additional two years after March 2019 may strike some as a shabby compromise.

Nigel Farage has described it as a two-fingered salute to the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit, while Jacob Rees-Mogg has voiced his disappointment at the delay.

But with EU negotiators refusing to give an inch and Remainers within the Cabinet pushing for Britain to remain in the single market and customs union until 2024, Mrs May appears to have made the best of a bad situation.

In making such a generous offer, the Prime Minister has placed the ball firmly back in Brussels’s court.

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Theresa May set out her vision for Brexit in a speech in Florence on Friday

If Michel Barnier doesn’t play nicely now it will be game, set and match to David Davis.

For if there is consensus on anything across the whole of Europe it is that punishing Britain will only result in damaging the countries that rely on us most for trade.

Germany, France, Italy and all the other EU member states which depend on the UK as an export partner will suffer – and no one who puts real people before petty party politics wants that.

Just as the EU must prioritise voters above its ambitions for a federalised superstate, so too must the Cabinet put their personal disagreements over Brexit to rest in a bid to secure a better future for Britain.

As Mrs May once again stressed in Florence on Friday, no deal is still better than a bad deal

Mrs May’s speech may not have appealed to ultra Brexiteers or the Remoaners who have been willing Brexit to fail from the beginning.

But in striking a conciliatory tone, it has appeased the moderates on both sides of the Brexit divide.

For beyond the barbed rhetoric expressed on social media sites, most Brexiteers have concerns about leaving the EU and most Remainers have concerns about staying in.

The silent majority simply wants our exit to be as smooth and pain-free as possible and if it takes an extra two years, so be it.

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Theresa May offered to pay int EU for an additional two years after March 2019

It is also worth remembering that Mrs May’s offer of £19billion until 2021 is conditional on both sides making progress. What this isn’t is a golden goodbye or a payment for continued access to the single market.

While we are ready, willing and able to negotiate our future relationship with the EU, we will not be blackmailed into paying something for nothing.

As Mrs May once again stressed in Florence on Friday, no deal is still better than a bad deal.

Since both sides face short-term financial pain in return for long-term economic gain, it’s high time Brussels started sharing Britain’s vision for a bold, freetrading future.